it’s plausible, but i don’t know if that holds true when mortality is low enough, although probably has to be much lower than covid. otoh species also evolve into an environmental dead end all the time. so /shrug
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**Up front, we’re talking to doctors and that will dictate our decison, but I’m nonetheless curious what the brain trust here thinks:
My son is 11, and since he had heart surgery at like 1 week old and we consider him to be in the vulnerable group when it comes to catching COVID, we’ve been pretty desperate to get him vaxxed as soon as we can.
His 12th b-day is mid-Feb, so for a while now we’ve been excited about the light at the end of the tunnel. But here in CZ they just approved vax for 5-11 as well, with first shots coming as early as like 2 weeks from now.
This kinda feels like a weird poker EV question, but…
Knowing that the doses are different for the two cohorts, and also knowing that we really want our son vaxxed ASAP, is there any reason to leave him un-vaxxed for an extra two months to get him the 12+ vax? I clearly don’t know a lot about the science, but something tells me the shot that is approved for 5 yr olds must be different (stronger? more effective?) than the one approved for 17 year olds.
My inclination is to just get him the jab, whatever the dose, ASAP. Is that right iyo?
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The only difference between the 5-11 shot and the 12+ shot is that it is a lower dosage. I’d get him whatever he’s eligible for as soon as possible rather then waiting.
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Agreed
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Yeah, but it’s 3 weeks between shots here, so he won’t be turning 12 in between, and given omicron I think it’s way more important right now that he get the shots as soon as possible versus waiting till february. He can always get boosted later on.
Edit: Assuming he is in the US.
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Still possibly on for the trip to Phil in two weeks.
Apparently they are now offering boosters if you are 2 to 6 months, and recommend If you are traveling overseas.
Get the booster?
Get whatever you can for the kid as soon as you can. Get those first two doses ASAP
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Omicron looks to be about to run through the unvaccinated and partially vaccinated population like a knife through water. Waiting until february for dose 2 if you have the option of getting it earlier is -EV.
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You posted this earlier and may have missed my earlier response, so I will again ask, where, in the US, is community spread currently low enough in your opinion that a delay is justified?
And as a follow-up, where, in the world, is such risk level currently low enough? (Maybe Australia/NZ/Far East I guess).
Fair. I don’t know where the original poster lives, I just assumed the US.
The Czech Republic
My recollection from @superuberbob is that CR’s numbers are as terrible as the US, or nearly so. I would not delay.
Some hopeful news from Tshwane District in Gauteng with the usual caveats (early on, age profile skews extremely young etc):
https://twitter.com/MRCza/status/1467138777881747456
Some choice quotes, but it’s not a long article:
“The main observation that we have made over the last two weeks is that the majority of patients in the COVID wards have not been oxygen dependent. SARS-CoV-2 has been an incidental finding in patients that were admitted to the hospital for another medical, surgical or obstetric reason.”
“This is a picture that has not been seen in previous waves. In the beginning of all three previous waves and throughout the course of these waves, there has always only been a sprinkling of patients on room air in the COVID ward and these patients have usually been in the recovery phase waiting for the resolution of a co-morbidity prior to discharge.”
“Of 38 adults in the COVID wards on 2 December 2021, 6 were vaccinated, 24 were unvaccinated and 8 had unknown vaccination status. Of 9 patients with COVID pneumonia 8 are unvaccinated, 1 is a child. Only a single patient on oxygen was fully vaccinated but the reason for the oxygen was Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.” NB: Gauteng has ~31.5% of adult population vaxxed
“A significant early finding in this analysis is the much shorter average length of stay of 2.8 days for SARS-CoV-2 positive patients admitted to the COVID wards over the last two weeks compared to an average length of stay of 8.5 days for the past 18 months. The NICD reports a similar shorter length of stay for all hospitals in Tshwane in its weekly report. It is also less than the Gauteng or National average length of stay reported by the NICD in previous waves.” Wish they’d accounted for the difference in age profile here
Here’s their current deaths to cases graph:
Altogether it’s not presenting such an awful picture (so far).
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That looks pretty promising.
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Yeah, I guess they just count however many have been admitted to the covid ward. Bound to inflate figures to some extent though.
So basically omicron is so ubiquitous in SA right now that a huge percentage of people going to the hospital for any reason have it? Makes that toddler scare article posted upthread a lot less scary.
It seems like there are two outs for responsible people: hope vaccine/booster strongly protects against severe disease and/or the disease itself is less severe. But like, all the other news (transmissibility, reinfection) seems quite Harold (ie bad).